Update: In Notch’ own words (Pastebin version because his site is being hammered):
I’m aware this goes against a lot of what I’ve said in public. I have no good response to that. I’m also aware a lot of you were using me as a symbol of some perceived struggle. I’m not. I’m a person, and I’m right there struggling with you.
I love you. All of you. Thank you for turning Minecraft into what it has become, but there are too many of you, and I can’t be responsible for something this big. In one sense, it belongs to Microsoft now. In a much bigger sense, it’s belonged to all of you for a long time, and that will never change.
It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.
His honesty and openness is very welcome.
I bought Minecraft way back in the alpha days (September 29, 2010, to be exact), and I haven’t ever regretted it one bit. Thank you for Minecraft, Markus.
It’s official. Microsoft has acquired Mojang, and thus, Minecraft.
From Mojang’s announcement:
Minecraft has grown from a simple game to a project of monumental significance. Though we’re massively proud of what Minecraft has become, it was never Notch’s intention for it to get this big.
As you might already know, Notch is the creator of Minecraft and the majority shareholder at Mojang. He’s decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance. Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning Minecraft became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang. He’ll continue to do cool stuff though. Don’t worry about that.
While I’m not particularly happy about Minecraft going to Microsoft – of all places – I fully understand Notch’ reasoning. Even my own little one-man translation company is a huge amount of effort to run, both in actual working hours (translating) and all the stuff that comes with owning a company (the administrative and office crap nobody likes to do). I can only imagine that is must be a thousand times more difficult to run a company as successful as Mojang, and I can understand him wanting to get rid of it, get a huge pile of money, and use it do new stuff, free from pressure.
So, thank you for Minecraft, Notch, and you and your colleagues deserve this massive break. Congratulations!
So, what about Minecraft’s future? From Microsoft’s announcement:
Minecraft fans are loyal, with nearly 90 percent of paid customers on the PC having signed in within the past 12 months.
That sentence.
That sentence, Microsoft.
That sentence tells me all I need to know. If you’ve paid any attention to the negative developments in gaming over the recent years, that sentence should send chills down your spine.
Notch’s personal thoughts at http://notch.net/ (down at the moment due to traffic)
He got rich. He deserves it. Minecraft is dead. Moving on.
How is it dead, exactly? Did your client stop working after the announcement? Can you not log in anymore?
Stop being so melodramatic, it makes you look like a whiny child.
At the very worst, Microsoft will screw this up in two ways. One, they might move development of the PC/Mac/Linux client from Java to some other language. That may not be as big a deal as one would think though, since there are projects based on Wine for both platforms that could easily fix the issue.
The other big screw up would be if Microsoft starts enforcing their IP against Minecraft users who post on Youtube. Those users are the heart and soul of Minecraft; they are the ones the rest of us turn to for tutorials, entertainment, and a sense of community. Microsoft seems to be so proud of getting all those young, eager gamers under their cloak, but if they don’t do this right they’ll lose the majority of the Minecraft fanbase.
I’m seriously hoping that Microsoft realizes the value of what they just bought, and treats it accordingly. I’m not holding my breath, but I do have hope. I also hope this means we’ll finally get a real Minecraft client for Windows Phone (or whatever they call the OS now). SurvivalCraft is nice but it’s getting stale.
If Microsoft isn’t careful and alienate the minecraft community it will mean they have thrown $2.5 billion down the drain. Even worse, as they will earn bad-karma.
I have to admit that this is probably what will happen, so basically the end result will be $2.5 billion spent on buying some hate.
I just hope I am wrong and minecraft continues to thrive, even if it is under the hands of microsoft.
The Minecraft craze is on the decline. Like all big gaming hits, eventually people will get bored and move on. Notch did the right thing to cash out now, I’m surprised he didn’t do it earlier.
Microsoft doesn’t have a good track record buying game companies. Look what happened to Rare. It will be annoying when they drop Linux support, but the game is trivial to clone.
Edited 2014-09-15 15:03 UTC
Exactly.
So here we are 5 years later. Minecraft has mostly run its course. Don’t get me wrong, Minecraft is still huge, but it is mostly in maintenance mode and odds are introducing too much change at this point has just as much likelihood (maybe more so) of pissing off fans as it does of making them happy. There is a point where change becomes dangerous and Minecraft is already there.
So Notch could have done one of three things:
Sit back and leave things alone, while constantly being berated for resting on his laurels and not giving the fans more, just let the game slide into old age. He could have done that, and no one would have been happy about it.
Try and start doing something new or different with it, which almost certainly would have resulted in revolt. Again, no one is happy.
Cash out and let it be someone else’s problem. Still, no one is happy.
Point being, no matter what he did on one will be happy. So he is dealing with his on personal kobayashi maru – he can’t win, but one of his choices results in him getting 2.5 billion dollars…
Is anyone really going to fault him for it? Really?
Letting Microsoft get all the flack for ruining Minecraft and walking away with all the bank sounds like the optimal plan to me – Notch did his 5 years of exemplary public service, let him retire in peace.
Their point is not to support Minecraft community. Their point it to promote Xbox using it. It’s quite a different goal.
Another big way they could screw this up is by requiring subscriptions (XBox Live most likely) to support the multi-player aspects of the game. Also consider that hosting your own Minecraft server will likely go away under Microsoft.
On a related note, Microsoft will most certainly completely disrupt the mod market for Minecraft. Anything new Microsoft does will be incompatible, no doubt, and any change of programming language will completely disrupt the current community.
Also consider that Microsoft stands to make very little money without changing things considerably. Most of the people that want Minecraft already have it and have paid their dues. If Microsoft makes a new version and then wants to charge for it (unlike all previous releases of Minecraft) then they will lose people.
I don’t see how Microsoft will ever make money from this purchase and retain even a fraction of the current Minecraft user base.
EDIT: The only way they could keep the users would be to stick with Java and keep support for the other non-Microsoft platforms (Linux and Android, to name two). They could more easily keep the Windows/unmodded crowd but not if they force everyone to buy it all over again.
Edited 2014-09-15 14:39 UTC
The most interesting part is that Notch leaves as part of this. God speed Notch! We love you
If I had $2.5 billion in my back pocket, I probably wouldn’t feel like working for Microsoft (or anyone else) either…
– Brendan
But I understand and don’t blame Notch one bit. Minecraft will change dramatically under Microsoft, no doubt. But that’s okay, all things considered because it will open up doors for others to bring back the classic, so to speak.
I suspect one of Microsoft’s first programming moves will be to migrate Minecraft from Java to C# (or less likely C++). Then, or at the same time, they will move it to XBox Live. Non-Windows support will drop off from there (or be stuck on a “coming soon” status forever).
Oh well… moving on.
That’s why we have minetest and as a bonus it doesn’t require a super computer to run.
On one hand, sure, who can say no to $2.5 billion but on the other hand it also says that it’s ok to be part of the problem as long as you get paid well.
What problem? Notch created something he liked that became so big it stopped being fun for him. Is he supposed to give up being happy so others can play non-Microsoft Minecraft, which he hasn’t even done any programming for in quite some time?
The problem being that it looks a bit two-faced when you criticize others for being acquired by big companies etc and then sell your company to Microsoft for a rather large amount.
It puts a bit of taint on your integrity when it’s basically do what I say, not what I do.
I can see both sides of it. On the one hand, I’m sure he meant what he said about big takeovers like this, and I’m sure he feels conflicted about the whole thing. On the other hand, as he said, he never wanted Minecraft to be a big deal, so he’s happy to officially wash his hands of it.
As others have said, he now has the time and money to just play around with his own little projects and no one can tell him how to do it or take it away from him. I think that is the only truly good thing to come out of all of this.
I don’t know about you guys, but 2.5 billion would make me throw all principles I have out of the window.
Which shows that they weren’t principles enough to begin with. You have a point however that money can be a moral challenge to anyone.
Its easy to say that without a 2.5B offer. I’d sell my soul man.
One could argue that if that’s the case then you didn’t have any principles in the first place.
Someone without 2.5B could argue that, yes.
Why so sure? His action(s) demonstrated that he did not mean what he said. End of story. Once there is a track record, the benefit of the doubt does not (or should not) apply.
I think the problem is that we’re picking a sentence he said here or there and making judgments based on that.
Put yourself in his position and state of mind (gleaned from previous tweets and blog posts): He created a game just for the fun of it, and never intended it to explode in popularity. Fine, now it’s popular, and all of a sudden all this money is rolling in. But now, he’s actually having to work instead of goof around with coding simple games (his passion, remember), and he’s already working with Microsoft on the Xbox ports.
One day he has had enough of the constant complaints, and tweets that his asking price is $2 billion, just to shut people up. Apparently Microsoft listens, because their offer exceeds that. Remember, he’s the majority shareholder, which means if he walks away he’ll not only no longer be responsible for the monster he created and now hates, he’ll be rich enough to never have to code for the masses again. He can spend the rest of his life making silly games for his own entertainment.
I’d do exactly what he did, for pretty much the same reasons. Replace “coding games” with “building circuits” and I’m there, I just haven’t ever tried to make money off my hobby like he did.
IMO there is no need to invent some artificial narrative to preserve one’s own dissonance in the matter. Again, someone’s actions not matching their words it’s literally the definition of them not meaning what they said.
I have no opinion in pro or against this guy. I’m simply pointing that simple issue out. That’s all.
Well as I clearly stated, I was going by his past tweets and posts, not “inventing” anything. At worst I’m guilty of supposition based on facts in hand. I’m not claiming to have insight into his mind, just what I and anyone else can glean from his public persona. I presented a point of view, but I never said “this is what he’s thinking”. Maybe he is an entirely different person than what he shows the world.
And hey, as Nelson said, $2.5 billion might shake anyone’s principles. Maybe I’m projecting my own principles onto a guy who is not only not me, he’s not from the same culture, age group, world view, or financial history as me. Maybe I’m entirely off base. But again, I was just going off of what we know based on his own writings. I don’t see any other way to analyze the situation and still maintain a sense of neutrality.
But that’s exactly what having principles and integrity means: sticking to them when things are rough. It’s easy to make grand statements when you’re on a roll and having fun but they only really mean something if you stick to them even when it’s not all rainbows and unicorns.
Maybe people would have had less problems with this if he had just said “Fuck principles, I did it for the money” instead of “I can’t explain why I acted contradictory to what I’ve said previously” which is, quite frankly, a rather rubbish and dishonest explanation.
What’s that, you appropriated Thom’s way of talking? ;p
So you’re fine with building circuits but not with programming them? ;p
Edited 2014-09-20 08:18 UTC
I blame the big company when they buy out smaller companies. You can’t blame the smaller company as they are only given two choices – be bought out, or be driven out of business. No one can blame them for choosing the former. Remember that MS is INFAMOUS for buying out or driven under smaller companies. If MS is the big company in question, it’s realistically only a matter of how much they are willing to buy you for as the alternative is to get nothing.
I think in general you are absolutely right. However in this specific case, how could Microsoft possibly push Mojang out of business? Minecraft is one of those rare products that grew organically into the behemoth that it is, without a corporate mindset behind it. It was literally just a few guys who like to make games, and the gaming public ate it up because it was so different and simple, yet approachable. It appeals to kids and adults, mathematicians and sociologists, nerds and jocks. It truly is the Lego of this generation.
Simply put, Microsoft has nothing that comes close to competing with it; their offer was completely out of left field because it makes such little sense. Microsoft already has the right to distribute the game on their consoles, they didn’t have to buy the company for that. I think they seriously wanted to “own” the eyeballs of the millions of Minecraft players and conveniently had some offshore cash to burn. It’s got to be a marketing ploy, because nothing else makes sense.
Which is why they paid so much. MS wouldn’t pay $2.5B if they didn’t need to. They sure didn’t for Bungie. As for being “too big” to drive out of business, they could have done it, but it would have cost more. MS has driven bigger companies under over the years… almost killed Apple at one point – they were just a few million from dead before managing to turn it around.
A few million from dead before Microsoft bailed them out.
If Bloomberg is to be believed Notch approached MS, not the other way around, which makes this “be bought out or suffer” apply even less.
And if true, it makes all of his “corporate buyouts are evil” talk just that – talk. This story will likely drag on and change many times before the buyout is complete.
If it wasn’t mostly about the money, he would have sold the game to somebody who offered a bit less but didn’t totally go against his own definition of morality.
At some point Notch tweeted how he refused to “certify” Minecraft for Windows 8 because he thought Microsoft is trying to kill the desktop with it. Now he sold Minecraft to MS and he sure as hell knows their target hasn’t changed a bit.
Edited 2014-09-15 14:57 UTC
How much cash does Mojang AB or whatever the entity that got sold have? I don’t see that mentioned anywhere, and I have a feeling they have spent a fairly small proportion of what they got from Minecraft sales.
At the end of 2013, about $204 million, or 1.45 billion SEK.
Source: http://www.proff.se/foretag/mojang-ab/stockholm/data-och-tv-spel/12…
Edited 2014-09-15 15:15 UTC
Oh… not so much as to make the deal significantly cheaper for MS.
Eh, does it really matter? Microsoft expects it to break even on the acquisition in FY2015.
Mojang is actually an extremely healthy company with insane profit margins, they only have a handful of employees.
How exactly are they going to break even in one year? Last I checked, Minecraft made Mojang $157 million or so last year. Math does not add up here.
The key to this is GAAP accounting and overseas cash. Microsoft is saying that the $2.5B they put into motion to make this acquisition happen will make them more money than if it had just accrued interest in a bank.
The same reason Mojang makes sense is the same reason Nokia made sense, this is a foreign acquisition. They use their offshore cash that is would otherwise be extremely costly to repatriate into the US.
TL;DR: Accounting.
If Microsoft’s gaming division learned one thing from all the hate that their “Rise of the Tomb Raider” deal produced, it is how not to address loyal fans of the game who are upset at this decision and make them even more upset.
About the game itself, let’s see if their CEO’s mantra that “their experiences are going to be available on all devices” still applies.
What else could you expect from MS?
Another screwup
You quickly learn what will not get you downvoted here…
http://kotaku.com/5947162/notch-id-rather-have-minecraft-not-run-on…
He probably never was Microsoft material anyway
Minecraft turned out to be an excellent way of extracting $2,500,000,000 from a bloated IT corporation that was probably poised to piss it away on purified meaninglessness anyway.
So long as Notch does something even vaguely interesting — let alone beneficial — with the cash mountain he did the right thing for everyone.
I guess a cease and desist letter is on its way to Minetest and other games influenced by Minecraft/Infiniminer…
A more likely scenario is that Microsoft takes the code and produces a new product based on it in a different language, incompatible with the original. They’ll then milk the original until it stops giving them money and only update the new game. Any move away from Java will be a death sentence for the current game and community involvement.
http://minetest.net
For 2.5 billion Dollars one can buy 2000 houses, each 1.2 million Dollars worth and then one can buy a 50 thousand Dollar car for each of those houses. If you want to spread these houses all over the globe you have to put on average more than two in one country (there are about 196 countries, depending on which ones you acknowledge).
Try Mars.
I have a feeling Notch is just gonna go buy as much rare electronica vinyl records as he can.
I could easily live several decades with just 1 mil and I’d most likely use the the rest of the money for various charities and stuff. Hell, I wouldn’t know what to do with that much money. The thing is, though, that as much as I hate commercialism, selling oneself and all that, I could do so much good wrt. the world around me with $2 billion that it’d totally be worth compromising on my own morals and values temporarily.
Even with only $1M you could put that in some index trackers and safely live on $40,000/yr indefinitely without eating in to the principal.
Soon we’ll have announcement of Minecraft 2 in the making and it’ll be Xbox one exclusive!
Notch is a random nobody. He gets rich by pure luck and quits because he can’t take the pressure. Now the internet is angry.
No, the Internet (or parts of it) is angry because he made all these public statements about how you shouldn’t let your small company be bought out by big business and how indie companies are the saviors of gaming etc etc and then he makes a 180 and sells his company for a large amount to a really, really big company.
No, he sold his company for a really, really large amount.
I’d wager that $2.5 billion is enough to make many people sell their first born and that most people are more butt hurt because it wasn’t them cashing in.
Edited 2014-09-16 20:39 UTC
Well, that certainly explains why he got so upset with Occulus. He was just butthurt that Facebook didn’t approach Mojang instead.
The internet thinks a company worth $2.5B is a small company. The internet thinks a random guy’s tweets should decide his actions. The internet would rather he BLOW HIS BRAINS OUT than quit. The internet is EXPERTS at running billion dollar businesses.
Thank you for confirming my assertion, internet. You are angry. So angry. I feel it. I feel the hatred coursing through you, internet.
Yes, why would anyone expect people to stand by their word? I mean, talk is cheap after all which is obvious from the actions taken. I guess Notch was more upset with Occuous because Facebook approached them instead of Mojang than he was with Occulus “selling out”. Talk is indeed very cheap.
You know, he could have sold the company in a way that didn’t completely contradict his public statements if quitting was indeed more important than the money.
Blow his brains out? Really? He’s not even running the company, he’s just the majority owner and the chairman. Not exactly running the tedious, stressful day-to-day business.
At least he could give an honest explanation instead of this “I can’t explain my actions” and “i’m struggling with you” bullshit. Really? You just sold your very profitable company for an insane amount of money and you have the gall to say that you’re down there struggling with the other indie developers?
Mojang isn’t a billion dollar business. It’s a very healthy company that makes a good profit but it’s not a billion dollar business. Also, Notch isn’t running Mojang. That’s the job of the VP, CEO and COO and he’s none of those.
If Minecraft continues to be the enjoyable game we have come to know and love it will be despite Microsoft.
That is not really very likely anymore.
So now he just some ultrarich lying hypocrite.
From what I recall, he said he would open the source once the game was finished. Yet the game, by design, will never be a finished product. So I never believed him when he said that anyway.
With 2.5 Billion dollars, I’d spend $100-200 million trying to build a Bussard Polywell Fusion reactor at 100 MegaWatt (theorised) size. To see if it actually works. Then I’d spend the rest on touring the world and doing whatever I want. 2.5 Billion dollars is a crapload of money. You can spend it on a LOT of stuff…
Don’t like a disease? don’t donate to it…. just find the best/most promising research leads and fund scientists to directly work on it, skip the charities altogether.
Need Linux to run a specific Windows app? Pay someone to fix wine to run it, or hell pay someone to disassemble the entire exe and remake it on your platform of choice.
Hell for $50 Million I could buy my fav game series (Wing Commander) from EA and do whatever the hell I want with it.